The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
As we head into the Labor Day weekend, I thought I'd take at least a stab at attempting to set aside, for a moment, thoughts of the barbecue I'm planning to celebrate, well, labor. From Bill James's 1979 Baseball Abstract, as quoted in Michael Lewis's Moneyball:
[I]t is not possible for a flake...to get 191 hits in a season. It is possible for a bastard to do this. It is possible for a warthog to do this. It is possible for many people whom you would not want to marry your sister to do this. But to get 191 hits in a season demands...a consistency, a day-in, day-out devotion, a self-discipline, a willingness to play with pain and (to some degree) a predisposition to the team game which is wholly inconsistent with flakiness. It is entirely possible, on the other hand, for a flake to hit 48 homers. Hitting 48 homers is something done by large, slow men three-quarters thespian....
The sheer and completely admirable beauty of skill and persistence and hard, stubborn work.
Anyway, that's one of my favorite quotations on labor. What're some of yours?
- Comment (17)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (0)
Comments :
Mar '11
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
And he to me "This mount is such, that ever
At the beginning down below 'tis tiresome,
And aye the more one climbs the less it hurts."
Dante - The Purgatorio - Canto IV
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Dec '10
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
Right now, my favorite quote is:
"If I buy your silly chickens and I buy the fencing and I buy the feed, it isn't reasonable for me to pay you for the eggs you provide, unless you actually go outside and collect the eggs. OK, after the Simpsons."
(grumble)
Aug '11
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson
Jul '10
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
"They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor."
Eric Hoffer
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
Jimmy Carter: "They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor."
Eric Hoffer · Sep 2 at 3:39pm
Wow. That is just gorgeous!
Jun '10
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
Do we really need a holiday celebrating labor unions? I propose we start a campaign to re-brand the holiday "Entrepreneurs Day."
Mar '11
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
I don't Entrepreneurs could get the day off.
Dec '10
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
I don't have days off, but when my beloved does, she wants to know what we're going to do. She is uninspired if I say, "Well, since you are not driving today, I thought I might change the oil in your car".
I know I have to load up the kayaks and head for a river and her car will just sit there, crying out to me, "Please change my oil!"
We are getting so accustomed to living as penurious acceptors of the status quo I took upon myself, when I left corporate America, and it is not, at all, what I may have envisioned. We are not Little House On The Prarie; we are Married With Children and dad just doesn't seem to be pulling his weight.
I took the leap, today, and spent numbers with commas in them to go in on the ground floor of a business that wants to expand and called me.
I may go bust. But I may start making some real money for my own company, in the worst possible business environment, well, ever!
I have chickens in my office; it's time. Happy Labor Day!
May '11
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
I do not want to highjack the conversation but since you quoted Bill James I want to throw out a pitch for his new book about the history of crime in America since about 1850 entitled Popular Crime. Near the beginning he says: "I said that no one writes about these issues, which is not literally true. I am sure that in some corner of the academic world there hides an intellectual who knows vastly more about these issues than I do and has written 208 published articles about them, which none of us have ever heard of, probably because he writes like a troll, or, not to be sexist, she writes like a troll or trollette. I am not here to bash intellectuals, either; I'm just a sarcastic bastard by nature."
The man has as much to say about crime as baseball and is as equally iconoclastic in his approach.
Sep '10
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
Isn't that called International Robber Baron Day or Colonialist Imperialist Day or some such? I think its celebrated with a flag showing someone counting huge stacks of denari while a Greek silver miner chokes to death on noxious fumes.
Nov '10
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
Casey
I don't Entrepreneurs could get the day off.
Double like!!
Jun '10
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
If this were work, I wouldn't be doing it.
Jun '11
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
I know you were looking for quotations that fall into the philosophical or timeless wisdom category, but "Job Growth Grinds to a Halt," the headline in this morning's Wall Street Journal, is a statement worth noting. Whether we're planning to enjoy the first weekend of college football or the last weekend at the beach, spend a moment this Labor Day weekend contemplating how we can employ our time and talent to officially un-employ the Redistributor in Chief in 14 months. It will be a labor of love...
May '11
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
Proverbs 14:23
All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.
Look at the economy: Q.E.D.
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
"In order to love and serve God, it is not necessary to do extraordinary things. Christ asks all men without exception to be perfect as His heavenly Father is perfect (cf. Mt 5: 48). For the great majority of men, to be holy consists of sanctifying their work, to sanctify themselves in their work, to sanctify others with work, and also to find God on the road of their life."
~ St. Josemaria - Escriva, Founder of Opus Dei
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
Great question. Here is the prolific Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope (who had a full-time day job in the British postal service) on writing:
"I have prided myself in completing it [a book] within the proposed time,--and I have always done so. There has ever been a record before me, and a week passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.
"I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a man of genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been so I think I might well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing surely is so potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the waterdrop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules."
Apr '11
Re: The Hard, Beautiful Labor of Baseball
I think Geo. Will's Men at Work pretty much exhausts the field as regards baseball and labor.
But even though I disagree with him politically, I think Dash Hammett has the most beautiful prose on working. The Continental Op says (paraphrasing), "I forego the extra money because this job is satisfying to me."
And The Dain Curse has the best exposition of "thinking" I've ever read. "No one thinks clearly." Do read it - I'd quote it, but lost almost all of my books a couple years ago.